Removable or stowable soft tonneau covers for pickup vehicles are known in the art. These tonneau covers provide a vehicle with access to the cargo bed when the cover is pulled/folded back or removed, or, provides protection from the elements with the tonneau cover on/deployed. Such tonneau covers are typically manually unlatched on both sides before being moved into the desired positions.
Currently, tonneau covers have a rail that must be mounted down each side of the pickup box to give the cover a place to attach and seal out the elements. Typically, the rails are aluminum and/or the cover is a fabric cover. These side rails also act as a locator, aligning the bows/top cover as it is installed and positioned and provide a way to tension the top cover. Having to install these rails leads to additional height on the vehicle, cost, a non-cohesive look, and addition weight/complexity in the top.
There are other tonneau systems that are labeled as “low profile” to help fight the height and non-cohesive look. However, these covers still use an additional rail to mount the cover to the pickup bed and gain fabric tension so the design is no different than a “conventional” tonneau cover, it is just a different geometry.
Therefore, there remains a need for a system that eliminates the need for side rails, that utilizes an add-on bracket and/or an integrated bed design as an attachment method, eliminates the need of an additional attachment to gain tonneau cover tension, and provides easy multiple position accessibility into the cargo bed.